Social Therapy and the C-Suite

Some male executives from the Fortune 500 decided they needed to form a "group" to discuss all the babble about social media.They kept the group secret for fear of being discovered.

The goal of the meeting was to help each other understand all this social stuff and they asked a social media therapist to come into the group and help them with their confusion and to clarify issues so they could sound intelligent about the subject when speaking to others.

The Session:

The group met in one of the executive homes on Thursday night of every week. The forum was free-flowing with the "Social Media Therapist" facilitating the dialog. The sessions typically sounded something like this:

The C-Suite: We hired someone who says they had experience using the technology and asked them to manage our presence and teach others in the company how to use it as well. Our problem is that no one understands the person we hired when we ask questions about how to use the technology.

The Therapist Responds: Then I'd say you've chosen the right person to help you with social technology. However unless they are talking about the related philosophy then you are likely going to need someone who understands.

The C-Suite: This is all very confusing. We face many challenges with understanding all this stuff and how it can help us improve our ROI from marketing and advertising. Additionally we feel lost when asked questions from the analyst, our employees and now our customers are asking us questions. How do we respond when we don't understand?

The Therapist Responds: The reason you don't understand is because you are not listening. Unless you can hear what the conversations are truly saying you cannot understand what they are saying.

The C-Suite: How can we understand when they talk in a totally different language? Sounds all foreign to us. Maybe we need a translator or someone who talks in our language to explain all this stuff to us.

The Therapist Responds: The voice of the people is a different language then the voice of business. You talk about market share, ROI, politics, power and use everything to gain those results. Your treat people like dumb targets waiting to be captured for a transaction. You'll compromise any relationship to meet your results. You'll tell employees to do what needs to be done to get the result and in doing so you're damaging the fiber of their relationship, trust. You dodge accountability with double-speak and you'll sacrifice anyone to protect your own selfish gains. You use media to create an image when the image is not real or relational. You think hiring someone who understands the technology is the answer. What you don't understand that it isn't the technology, it isn't your strategy or marketing tactics rather it is a question of philosophy.

The C-Suite: Look, you don't understand. We don't have time to sit around and talk about philosophy. While we understand most of your last points you need to understand that our job is to satisfy our shareholders and they want results not a bunch of philosophical crap.

The Therapist Responds: How do you think the shareholders of AIG, GM, Banks, Newspapers and the host of other Zombie companies and industries feel today? How do you think all those unemployed people feel today? The people are fed up with how you think and what you do as a result of your thinking. Your shareholder results are only as good as how well your business is received by the market of conversations.

The C-Suite: This sounds like a counter-cultural movement much like the era of Hippies. Is this what is happening?

The Therapist Responds: Yes but it has nothing to do with drugs, sex, rock and roll or VW buses. It has everything to do with how and what people think. You know what I mean? It is all about what you refer to as a bunch of philosophical crap.It is called Hippies 2.0.

Disclosure: The therapist is a female who understands how and what the human network thinks because she is good at listening.